Did You Know...

Might as well go ahead and blame global warming for breaking up the Antarctic ice enough to free these ships — one of which contained some scientists on an expedition to document the effects of climate change on the Antarctic and the other sent to rescue them — because I’m sure somebody else will make that connection soon enough:

Two ships broke free Tuesday from the Antarctic ice that had trapped them off the continent’s coast.

Cracks in the ice allowed the Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy to escape the ice field where it had been stranded for two weeks, Australia’s Maritime Safety Authority said.

The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long, which had gotten stuck in the ice during an attempt to extract the Russian ship, broke free about an hour later, officials said.

The Akademik Shokalskiy had been trapped in unusually deep ice since Christmas Eve with scientists, journalists, tourists and crew members on board. A helicopter ferried the ship’s 52 passengers to an Australian icebreaker last week.

Some of the global warming expeditionists will plant trees to make up for the carbon footprint of the massive rescue effort (when global warming “scientists” spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere a few trees make things right, but there is no similarly easy atonement for your incandescent light bulbs).

WUWT readers may recall that when U.S. TV meteorologists, including yours truly, were asked to assist in weather forecasting for the stranded vessel, I made a prediction on December 31st:

“In a couple of minutes John Coleman was back on the phone to me, he wanted my assessment of the maps. I had looked at what was happening and saw what I thought might be an opening in 7-8 days based on the forecast graphics from WeatherBell, where the winds would shift to offshore in the area where Akademik Shokalskiy was stuck.”

Nice call.

Update:

Semi-related hilarity… Sean Hannity had “eco entrepreneur” Howard Gould on as a guest, and check out Gould’s explanation for the “polar vortez”: The Arctic is heating, and as a result that cold, displaced Arctic air is “falling down over us.”

It probably won’t be falling down over us during the next inevitable summer heatwave.